Congratulations, David Backes: The staggeringly, almost hilariously incorrect call that might have cost your team at least one point won't cost you any money.

Backes, the St. Louis Blues' captain, won't face a disciplinary hearing for a hit he laid on Detroit Red Wings defenseman Kent Huskins on Friday night. Backes leveled Huskins at 9:38 of third period with a clean (albeit late) shoulder to the sternum. The officiating crew, rather than call a two-minute minor, ruled that Backes made illegal contact with Huskins' head (he didn't) and ejected him from the game.

Detroit, naturally, scored on the ensuing five-minute power play to take a 4-3 lead and wound up winning 5-3.

No hearing means no suspension, which is as close to good news as the Blues could get. It's fun, though, to imagine how Backes' theoretical talk with Brendan Shanahan would've gone, though:

"Hey, David. I think you know why you're here."

"Actually, Shanny, I don't."

/cue video of hit

"OK, see ya later."

The more interesting thing to track is how the league deals with the officiating crew. It's difficult to figure how or why the situation played out like it did — the referee who made the call was behind the play, so all he saw was Huskins' head snap back. Given that, and probably Backes' reputation for playing a physical, on-edge game, some dots were inappropriately connected. Then, none of the other three officials disconnected them, which is the larger problem.

Policing headshots should be a priority, but common sense and quality control can't go out the window, either.

At the bottom of this screen cap is linesman Derek Amell. Seems he got a good look at what happened. But Amell didn't make the call — a referee (either Chris Lee or Ian Walsh) did. He was the guy 30-ish feet behind the play with no clear view of the point of impact.

Meanwhile, the Blues, after coming back from a 2-0 deficit, missed out on a chance to earn at least one point (and possibly two) against a division rival during a shortened season. They can't be happy about the outcome, though defenseman Barret Jackman deserves credit for not going ballistic on the referee after Backes was tossed.

"I'm not going to comment on that," coach Ken Hitchcock said after the game, which featured a Henrik Zetterberg hat trick and the eventual game-winner from Pavel Datsyuk. "It was a big turning point and it turned out being the turning point of the game."

Kevin Shattenkirk, who scored the Blues' first goal, refused to say the call was the reason his team lost.

"There are breaks in the game, and some of them don't go your way," he said. "We've got to do a better job of killing that penalty."

The Blues (6-2-0, second place in the Central Division) next play on Feb. 5 against the Nashville Predators.